Machinarium Review (oldladygreybun)
*Conditional recommendation only*
You will need to survive a longish space-invaders arcade game about midway. If that isn't within your skillset, you will be irrevocably stuck. And the puzzles are hard and convoluted.
If that's your thing, then, sure, go for it :-)
If not, then be warned :-(
This game gets a lot of cred., and I like both the story and how it looks. And it is wonderfully imaginative and I like the steampunk and odd characters. But it can be seriously obtuse - like : 'fix the power, to get electricity to a line, and get the cat to electrocute-stun itself, to carry down several stairs, to stuff into a pipe, to scare out a mouse, to make the music swing, to make a neighbour throw down a radio, that breaks and pick up a part inside, to ??'... or something like that, I may have got it jumbled a bit ... ;-) There's a ton of stuff like that. Many places it's just about impossible to know what you have to do, to get what you need, to achieve...ehmm, what exactly ? Many items or interactable zones are almost impossible to see hidden in the scenery or background. And many of the puzzles are really hard. Plus the fact that the character has 3 different height levels and some (many) interactions will only accept if he's at some specific height otherwise he just stands there shaking his head. Luckily there are step-by-step guides to hand, the in-game hint is ok but also playthroughs and walkthrough guides by players. Without them I wouldn't even have been able cross that first drawbridge.
As someone who is absolutely useless at arcade games, a space invaders challenge played to the level of points-gathering required here is way beyond my skillset. Therefore utterly stuck at about halfway-ish in the game. And had to resort to guides again and again even to get that far.
So - am now uninstalling and feeling rather disappointed. OK so I am obviously too stoopid and too slow for this game. But it would have been nice if they had included an easier mode or just simply a SKIP function for those of us in the casual-and-slow category.
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